The Spiral
by LetThemRot
Summary: The Doctor is in one world, Rose Tyler in another, and the Void stretches between them. Life in the days following the Battle of Canary Wharf, told by those stranded in Pete's World.


It's been ten days.

Ten days of life in a different universe. Ten days of wondering what's happening back in the real world – her world – and how they're explaining away the metal men and flying robots and all the bodies. Ten days of people going out and living their lives; working their nine-to-five jobs, going to the pub with friends, and eating dinner with their families every night. Ten days of Rose lying in bed, always in a semi-trance, staring at the wall like it might split down the middle, letting her back to the Doctor, if only she watches it for long enough.

Ten days.

Harriet Jones is on the tele, like she's been for the last ten nights, saying that yes, the Cybermen are gone (it's taken three years for the information to get out – the factories have been sealed off and uninvestigated for so long that none of the public noticed), and no, it's not information the public has access to. Everyone should understand this and get on with their lives. The Cybermen have been separate for a long time – now they're just gone for good. Let the authorities handle this.

But she is Jackie Tyler, and she knows the authorities. She's living with three of them.

They leave in the morning and come back at night like clockwork, dropping bags in the mudroom, devouring what's put in front of them for dinner, letting slip tidbits and mutters of information, because this has been normal for them for the past few years. It's normal for Jake to always have that pistol on his hip. It's normal for a day in the office to include finding alien technology. It's normal for a dead man to say he loves you. But then, he's not the one who died in this world – she is.

God, she still hasn't gotten over that.

At least they can all agree that what's happened with Rose isn't normal – the lethargy and blank staring and ceaseless tears that she doesn't even seem to notice anymore. That's nice: having something be strange for everyone. And it's nice to have someone take over in the evenings and sit beside Rose and coax her into swallowing a few spoonfuls of soup after Jackie spent most of the morning and afternoon doing it.

Pete's still uncomfortable around Rose – still can't equate himself with having a daughter when before he only had a dog – but Mickey's always known her, and Jake, for some reason, will sit up with her long after the other two have collapsed from exhaustion.

She'll peek into Rose's room sometimes, late at night, just to see what's going on. The picture's almost always the same: Rose, eyes open or shut, but somehow always staring at the wall, and Jake in the chair beside the bed, talking. What he says, she doesn't know; the words are always too quiet. Sometimes she wonders if he's saying anything at all, or is just muttering nonsense to let Rose know she's not alone. But he'll still be there.

Mickey too – the rare times when he doesn't have to get up early the next morning, he'll force Jake into bed and sit with Rose instead. He won't talk. He'll hold her hand though, clasped in two of his, and watch her stare at the wall.

That's all any of them can do, really: go on with their lives and take care of Rose as best they can while she just lies there, staring at the damn wall, waiting for the Doctor to come back for her.

He would if he could – Jackie doesn't doubt that for an instant – but even with his ship he said that travel between universes would become impossible once the rift is closed. They'll never see him again.

...

It's been two and a half weeks.

Life rolls on. He goes out to the pub and watches football with Jake and tries to pretend, for as long as he's out of the house, that he's from this world and never knew Rose or the Doctor. Investigates aliens by day, drinks and socializes in the evening, and then, when he has to, goes home to an empty, staring Rose who's nothing like any Rose he remembers. These days, it's a miracle if she takes the soup bowl from their hands and feeds herself.

She is not the Rose he once knew, and she wasn't even before she lost the Doctor. The Rose who helped stop the Dalek and Cyberman invasion was a wholly different woman from the one who skipped away from him into the TARDIS, off to travel with the Doctor for the first time.

The current Rose is half a step away from terrifying.

Mickey hasn't got a clue what it is Jake says to her, those nights when he sits up with her until it's well past midnight, but he hears the voice through the door any time he chances to walk by. One of these days he'll ask.

One of these days.

Right.

And one of these days, Jake won't hesitate before touching him. One of these days, Rose will look at something besides that wall. One of these days, the Doctor will return.

He looks at Pete and Jackie and gets jealous sometimes. They're _happy_. Or, if not happy, then some admirable substitute for happy. They have their dead partner back in their arms, or so it seems, and somehow that's automatically alright and different brains don't matter so much and they can love each other like they would have all along.

Maybe it's the time.

_Time heals all wounds_, that saying goes. Her Pete has been dead twenty years. His Jackie's been gone for three.

Alright, so Ricky's been dead for three years too, but Jackie's got the same name and the same general attitude and she immediately reciprocates Pete's emotions. They mourn together and love together. It makes sense once you think about it.

Everything makes sense once you think about it long enough.

Give it another day or week or month, and Rose will get out of bed. Give her a year, and she'll have settled into this universe, accepted that the Doctor's never coming back for her, and moved on with life.

Yeah, right.

Ricky Smith's memory will be wiped from the face of the universe the very same day Rose Tyler gives up on the Doctor.

...

It's been a month.

Rose has started speaking again. Of course, she only murmurs, and it's only about the Doctor and the places they went, but at least she's talking.

In any event, Jackie's thrilled, and Mickey and Jake both look a little less stressed all the time, so Pete figures this is something he should be pleased about too. It's not that he doesn't like Rose, it's just that she and Jackie both look (or look_ed_, when Rose stared at things beside blank walls) at him like her father when he's _not_. She's a dead man's daughter. Mind you, Jackie is a dead man's wife, but that's different. At least she existed in this world at some point. Rose's counterpart here was a dog.

He saved her though – he jumped back to the Doctor's universe and grabbed her before she fell into the Void – so maybe that's why. Saving someone's a properly fatherly thing to do, so Jackie looks at him like Rose's father and there isn't a whole lot that can be done to change her mind.

Sometimes he wonders what the real Jackie would say if she could see him. She'd be happy, he likes to think. He's found an almost exact replica, so close that they share a name and a body, and the only difference is that the new one has a daughter and has been a widow for twenty years. No shame in getting together – the widow and the widower. They fit into the holes in each other's lives, and that's good enough.

He doesn't think about what Jackie would _actually_ say. Some things are better off not reflected upon.

It's bad enough to have the glances he sometimes catches from Jake: stone-cold and furious, fired off whenever Jake thinks he's not looking. Of course the young man thinks he and Jackie are wrong; he lost his two friends, after all, and you can't replicate friendship the same way you can with love. And Mickey's too different from Ricky. He's… well, to be honest, Pete only knew Ricky for an hour or so before he died, so he hasn't got a clue what the differences are, especially after three years of knowing only Mickey.

They were different though – clearly more different than the two Jackies and two Petes. And he's been getting the feeling that Jake hates him for having that.

The kid should learn to be grateful for what he's got. Same for Rose. They have their lives and this world – which is quickly recovering now that the Void activity has ceased – but they've stuck themselves onto memories of people who are dead or will never be seen again and thrown up walls against it all. They deserve each other.

He once made a comment about that, in the kitchen one night, when Jake was off in Rose's room, talking at her. He doesn't remember exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of suggesting that Jake had an interest in Rose that went beyond friendship. Jackie laughed and rolled her eyes and turned away, waving off the possibility. Mickey just shook his head. Whatever they saw that Pete didn't, they weren't telling him.

Rose and the Doctor, maybe.

If he was really her father, he'd complain about it, he thinks. Gallivanting off around the universes with a strange man in a box, and nobody thinks odd of it?

Well, maybe they did at first. Maybe they fought, and maybe Rose just left anyway, without telling them, because she was so hellbent on going out to see the universe. Maybe twenty years of mourning had softened Jackie's will until she let her go. _His_ Jackie certainly would've put up a fight.

He needs to stop thinking about them like that. _This_ Jackie is _his_ Jackie. One and the same. They can get back to everything they've missed for all these years, fall back into routine, keep going with life.

His life, his routine; now their life, their routine. Their dog, their tele, their books. Even their house – not the mansion anymore; he sold it, but bought a new house that still fits all five of them comfortably.

Pete no longer remembers how Mickey and Jake came to be living with them. Something about looking after Rose, probably. Some half-assed but reasonable excuse that he'd accepted amidst the mess of orienting Jackie and dealing with Rose, and now here they are, and they don't seem to be planning on leaving anytime soon.

Once Rose gets up they'll most likely leave. Go back to their flats and only see him at work and leave him and Jackie and Rose – until she gets her own place – alone. At least then Pete won't have Jake glaring at him so much anymore.

...

It's been six weeks.

She's taking her time getting back. Step by step, inch by inch, but she's coming back to life. Now, when his voice gets hoarse in the early hours of morning and he has to stop talking, she takes over and tells him stories in return. He's heard at least four dozen by now.

She talks about frozen waves in alien oceans and about a child who would have destroyed the world to find his mother and about a great telepathic head called the Face of Boe. And she speaks of terrifying things too: creatures that wear human skins as suits; a thing called the Wire that sucked off people's faces and emotions; being there when the Earth was consumed by the sun; a black hole and a force that might have been the Devil himself.

Tears come less frequently now, but sometimes they'll start up again in the middle of a sentence, streaming down her salt-worn cheeks, choking her words into nothingness.

At first, Jake had wondered if she was telling the stories or just speaking memories aloud, totally unaware that there was even another person in the room. Maybe, originally, she was. But as her voice got louder and she became more alive, that notion faded away. And when she says "I hated her so much," while telling him about Lady Cassandra, The Last Human, her face turns away from the wall to look at him. "I think you'd have hated her too." Her mouth twitches and presses into a sad smile. "She turned out alright in the end, when she realized she was dying. Right then, once she knew it was all over… she was more human that she'd been all the rest of her life."

Jake feels like he should go get someone – Jackie should at least know – but stays rooted in his seat, leaning forward, elbows on his knees and hands clasped together. The clock on the bedside table reads three-something AM, it has been six weeks since Pete saved Rose from the Void and brought her to his world, and she is gazing at Jake instead of the wall.

"He brought her back to a dinner she'd had with the Prime Minister, thousands of years before, when she'd still had muscles and bones and organs instead of just skin." Jake didn't need to ask who 'he' was. "She was in her servant's body, Chip's, all small and weak and gray, and she walked up to herself and said she was beautiful, just before collapsing. Chip's body was just so worn out from it all – he'd only had a half-life to begin with. And the old her… she held Chip in her arms while he died, and she called for a medic, and she told him everything would be alright." The tortured smile on her mouth widens just a hair. "Bloody humans. Always so optimistic about everything."

This should be a cue to say something bright and hopeful and encouraging and optimistic, just to prove that statement true and give it weight. Jake shifts forward a little more, reaches out a hand, and brushes a few strands of hair back from Rose's cheek. "Everybody gets caught up in starin' at a wall sometimes."

Her eyes flicker back to said wall for just a moment before they return to him. "He's all alone now."

This is true. The lines of Jake's face soften and resolve themselves into a forced grin. "That is why we've gotta work out a way to get you back to him."

Something that resembles both a laugh and a sob wrenches itself from Rose's throat, and her eyes close. "Impossible."

"Yeah, I think I heard him say that about a thing or two that happened anyway." Jake presses a kiss to her forehead. "He'll find a way, or we will," he murmurs against her skin, making a promise that might very well be a lie. "You should try to get some sleep."

He needn't have bothered to say it; he sits back to find that her breathing has sunk into the slow routine of slumber, all the muscles in her face relaxed, her head still turned towards him, finally facing something besides that damn wall.

...

It's been two months.

Rose gets out of bed without prodding now, but she still won't leave the house. When she first walked into the kitchen and poured herself a bowl of cereal, the sound of Jackie's mug of tea shattering on the floor was loud enough to bring Jake and Mickey running (Pete was at a Torchwood administrative meeting; the UN wanted to send out satellites in search of aliens again).

The scattered shards of clay had barely ceased rattling when they burst through the kitchen door, pistols already drawn; no doubt expecting rouge Cybermen at the least, and certainly something more sinister than Rose and Jackie and a growing puddle of tea on the floor tiles. Mickey immediately released his grip on his weapon in favor of crossing the room to wrap Rose in a hug and spin her around.

Jackie remembers thinking that his grin was seriously in danger of splitting open his cheeks by the time he set Rose back down. Then she was the one hugging her daughter, rocking back and forth and saying "Oh, sweetheart, you're back." Maybe she might have said 'you're you again' if not for the trace of hollowness she'd seen in Rose's eyes. Yes, she was up and walking, but she still had a long way to go.

"Good to be back among the living, yeah?" That was Jake, leaning his weight against the doorframe, watching it all with a carefully blank expression.

Rose had made a little 'humph' noise in her chest and pulled away from Jackie. She'd still been dressed for bed, and her hair was a mess (despite all the time Jackie had spent sitting next to her brushing it) and her skin looked absolutely terrible from all the crying, and when she should have smiled or laughed she instead just shook her head and went to pour the rest of her cereal.

But now it is several days after that incident and she is at least a little bit more alive. She's bleached the brown out from her roots again and is sitting on the couch in sweatpants and a sweatshirt that is far too large to be her own, reading the newspaper and nibbling on toast. Jackie sits at the counter with a different mug of tea, dividing her attention between watching Rose and the television.

She cannot rid herself of the feeling that this woman in front of her is not her daughter. The real Rose Tyler stayed behind with the Doctor and this is just some shell or imposter sent across to give everyone the illusion that she'd come along. Rose is really over on the other side of the Void, skipping through time and space in the TARDIS, and she's happy.

She's happy there.

It's a point of debate, because Jackie is happy _here_, but Rose isn't, and Mickey has just sort of fallen in between them on the scale and doesn't seem to care too much. But Jackie likes to think he's happy here, if only because he's got Jake and was able to say a proper goodbye to his Gran, the poor woman. But Rose, if she could get back, would be happy enough for all of them, and the Doctor would have someone to hold his hand again.

This universe doesn't have a Doctor.

They have a Torchwood, and they had the Cybermen, but they don't have a Doctor to come save them when things fall apart out of control. Here, humans have to try and fill in the gap that they don't even know he left for them. But that is _exactly_ what they're doing – she can see it happening. Boring old mundane humans like Pete and Mickey and Jake have to stand in for the Doctor and his TARDIS. And even if they're managing okay for now, what will happen when some gigantic alien tentacle monster decides the Atlantic Ocean would make a wonderful bathtub and plops itself down and causes a tidal wave that puts half the British Isles underwater? What happens then?

Jackie doesn't really want to think about that. She just wants Rose to be happy again.

...

It's been three months.

Winter is on the way, but he and Jake have finally managed to drag Rose out of the house, so they're ambling down the sidewalk, sweatshirt- and jacket-clad shoulders hunched up against the chill. They're looking for someplace to eat dinner because Pete specifically asked for some 'private time' with Jackie, and none of them really want to think about what that entails. On a scale of such things, imagining your ex-girlfriend's mother and parallel-world father getting it on is only slightly less awful than thinking about your own parents doing it.

Rose says she wants Chinese, or the closest thing there is in this universe, so Jake brings them to the best Chianish place he knows. They get a table in the far corner by the window and order hot drinks to bring the blood back into the tips of their fingers. There's a pink flush to Rose's cheeks and she looks more alive than she has in ages. When Mickey makes fun of the waiter's combined accent and lisp behind his back, she even does that familiar tongue-between-her-teeth grin that's been missing for so long. A full five seconds pass before it's gone.

It's almost like she thinks she's not allowed to be happy without the Doctor.

Mickey's tempted to point at Jake and say "take grief lessons from him" but doesn't because it will achieve absolutely nothing. Everybody's different.

Rose spends eight weeks in bed, not speaking for the first four, then gets up, slowly finding her feet before she slips into a new life. Jake takes a van with a lot of guns inside, goes in search of things to shoot, and continues to do so even after the war is over, because all those responsible have been sealed away but he isn't done exorcising his pain yet. He crossed back and forth across three continents and an ocean, hunting escaped Cybermen for almost a year before he felt like it was enough. Mickey watched him do it from the passenger seat.

He realizes that Rose is asking about the difference between Chinese and Chianish, and he has to explain about the mess that is this world's East Asia, with the Mongols managing to invade Japan and somebody different inventing sushi, so on and so forth with time-wasting babble. But he catches Jake's quietly amused smile when he rambles, because for _him_, this is how it should be; they're the nutters for thinking it should work any other way.

That smile is terrifying. It is _far_ too closely linked to The Night That Never Happened for Mickey to be comfortable seeing it, especially when it's nighttime and cold and Jake's looking directly at him.

"That didn't happen," they'd agreed. That was alcohol and pain and dead memories come alive, mixed with adrenaline from almost dying. That was Las Vegas. That didn't happen. They'd left the memory to dry out and fade under the frozen desert sun.

Mickey Smith does not have the right to live Ricky Smith's life.

"You just said the same thing three times in a row," Rose tells him, making him blush, but their food is being deposited on the table so he's spared from trying to remember what came out of his mouth while his mind wandered.

In between bites they make small talk about the food and finding Rose a job. She doesn't think she could go back to the routine of being a shopgirl, but can't think of anything else that seems worthwhile. Jake mentions Torchwood. Her mouth draws into a thin line and she shakes her head. Not yet, she says. It's too soon; she'll get too optimistic and do something stupid that will make everyone sorry.

Something stupid.

Suddenly the labels on their beer bottles are very interesting, so they fall into a conversation about alcohol across Europe while Rose watches in mild confusion. She's not a big drinker anyway – never has been. She'd even talked the waiter into getting her a hot chocolate.

Mickey pays with Pete's card – he'd been just short of desperate to get them out of the house – and helps Rose into her jacket. She clasps his hand as they step outside. Jake walks on his other side, pretends not to notice. The temperature has dropped enough for their breath to become fog when it passes their lips. Rose points out shops she recognizes from their Earth and asks about ones that she doesn't. Mickey wishes he'd worn a thicker coat.

They stop on the sidewalk outside the house. Lights are still on upstairs, it's only half nine, and Pete asked for the whole night. Rose is tired and says she's just going to go to bed anyway. She drops Mickey's hand, tells them both to go find a pub, pecks him on the cheek, then walks inside.

"So. You and Rose again?" Jake asks from across the table at the bar.

Shaking his head, Mickey looks down. "I don't think so. We're not what the other wants anymore. More like brother and sister now."

"Huh," is the eloquent response. "So she's after the time-traveling… alien. And you?"

Mickey thinks of The Night That Never Happened, forcing a smile. "Classified information; sorry."

Jake raises his eyebrows, grins, and kicks him under the table. "He or she?"

The sheer fact that he knows enough to ask that question makes Mickey blush and finish the rest of his drink in a hurry.

...

It's been four and a half months.

Rose has a job in a shop but hasn't moved out yet. Jackie – who is six weeks pregnant and therefore the voice of authority in the Tyler household – doesn't want her to. Somehow Mickey and Jake have piggybacked off that and are also still sticking around.

Perhaps he'd complain, if work didn't keep him so busy or if they were more in the way. As it is, the three young adults are little more than sprites or ghosts during the week. Everyone spends the day working, then they come home to Jackie and dinner at roughly the same time. A perpetually-tired Rose goes to bed early and Mickey and Jake will slip out to the pub or wherever, so Pete can pretend it really is just him and Jackie and the fetus growing in her belly.

The idea of a child is a lot more frightening that it should be. Jackie's gone through the whole process before, of course, but now she's a forty-year old woman and _he_ is the father.

Peter Alan Tyler, a father.

He hasn't got the slightest clue what to do.

Babies… well, he doesn't think he'd go so far as to say that he's terrified of them, but he's never had one before, and they seem to be a great mess and hassle and he's worried that Jackie might fall victim to all those complications that doctors talk about for women who are over thirty-five. He's lost his wife once. The pain of doing so again might cripple his emotions permanently.

Or something could go wrong with the child itself. Some many stories are floating around about children from middle-aged mothers, it sounds like they might as well get an abortion right now because there is almost guaranteed to be a learning disability or syndrome of some kind affecting it. It's too late to be doing this. Don't they realize the child will have to suffer from the emotional burden of their deaths that much earlier? What's the point?

Rose turned out alright – that's what he has to comfort himself with. She went off with the Doctor, true, but she kept coming back, and Jackie raised her all by herself. With two parents present they can hardly do worse.

But this child will grow up in a household where there's talk of other planets and universes and the people who come to visit are practically guaranteed to have a gun somewhere on their person, even if it's concealed. This child will have a half-sister – genetically, a sister – who tells stories of a man named the Doctor who's almost a thousand years old, and nobody here thinks oddly of it. This child is going to argue with everyone it comes across who tries to say something that they know isn't true.

He and Jackie are in for a lot of visits to headmasters' offices.

He's getting ahead of himself. There are still thirty-four weeks to go before he has to come face-to-face with the child. Right now, the important thing is to keep Jackie comfortable; keep her happy; keep her sane. If that means allowing Rose to stay here and read magazines and put her feet on the coffee table for a few months more, then, well, it's really quite a small price to pay.

...

It's been six months.

A week goes by before they return.

Word at Torchwood is that Pete called in the early hours of the morning, gave himself and Mickey a week off, and told everyone to continue as usual. Never even a mention of Jake's name, and by the time he'd heaved himself out of bed and stumbled to the front door, their headlights had already faded into the fuzzy darkness of a predawn London. He'd been left standing in the doorway, shivering in the cold, cursing them for not telling him, and himself for not waking up sooner.

So he'd had a week alone in the cavernous house; nobody but Rose-the-dog for company. That's all he was: Jake Simmonds, the fucking dog-sitter.

He went out and got plastered every night that week; angry because he'd been left behind, drinking because he was angry, wanting to kill something once he got drunk, and, three separate times, going home with strange men because he was drunk and angry and there was nothing to kill. It didn't do any good, of course; he was craving familiarity where there was none to be found: from people who couldn't even be arsed remember his name.

Three and a half years down the line, and it was only then that he came to realize exactly how much he had invested in Mickey. The preparation for the Battle of Canary Wharf was one thing – that had been part of a premeditated plan. Having him and all the Tylers up and vanish was like giving an orphan these wonderful adopted parents who coddled them for six months, then skipped off one night without saying a word in advance.

When he hears the tires rolling back up the driveway, Jake's first, momentary impulse is to greet them with a quartet of bullets. The notion vanishes as quickly as it arose, and he shifts Rose-the-dog off his lap, gives her ears one last scratch, and heads for the front door. He means to be angry, say something properly irate, maybe dish out cold glances for the next day or so.

The jeep grinds to a halt and its doors swing open as he comes down the steps. After three months of dry eyes, Rose has been crying again. She slips out of her seat, closes the door, steadies herself against the body of the truck for a second, then grabs Jake in a hug. No sooner have her arms locked around him than she is quietly weeping, making little whimpering noises that are absorbed by the fabric of his jacket.

One hand curled around the back of her head to hold her against him, Jake rocks from side to side, all anger temporarily banished from his mind. He rests his chin on Rose's hair and looks over at Jackie. "Where is he?"

Some pregnancy hormone must be getting to her head – she swipes at her eyes before answering. "He blew up a star just so he could say goodbye to her."

Face still hidden in the fabric of Jake's jacket, Rose moans.

He strokes her hair, presses a kiss to it to quiet her, and nods at Jackie. This conversation will finish – in some form or fashion – later. Most likely he'll have to drag answers out of Pete to keep Jackie from totally losing her dignity and killing him for it, but Jake _will_ get answers. The Doctor is still out of reach, and for the moment, that's all he needs to know.

A minute passes while Pete and Jackie and Mickey all shuffle by to begin the process of unloading the jeep. Eventually Rose loosens her grip on his ribcage and steps back, half-smiling, brushing the last of the salt water from her face. "I'm sorry about… we didn't bring you along."

"Don't worry about it. I survived, didn't I? Worry about yourself." He frowns as he studies the bags under her eyes and the twist of her lips. "Are _you_ gonna be alright?"

Rose hiccups out a laugh. "Yeah, I'll be fine… soon as I stop crying. God." She scrubs at her eyes. "I'm signing on with Torchwood."

"I thought – "

"Yeah, I know." Rose fidgets with the zipper on her jacket for a moment, then looks back up at Jake. "I don't care about doing something stupid anymore. I need to get back to him."

He nods, up-and-down, just once. "You're sure about that."

"Yep."

"What happens if you get trapped in the wrong world, or in the Void? What if you die?"

"Then at least I tried," she says.

Jake grins. "I always knew I liked your attitude. Proper little revolutionary you are."

"He needs me – someone who's not gonna leave him. And I won't, never again, once I get back."

"I didn't think you would."

Swallowing hard, Rose nods and steps away, shoving her hands into her pockets. "I'm gonna get my stuff from the boot."

Jake palms the back of his neck and says nothing. The cold bites into his skin and he's really not dressed to be standing around outside in the middle of January, but he doesn't want to go inside just yet. He watches Rose grab a rucksack and duffel bag from the jeep before she trots inside, still in pain, still missing the Doctor, still alive. Brilliant woman. He's proud to say he knows her.

Because Rose Tyler will get back to the Doctor – he'd wager his life on it. She'll work with people who know more about aliens and dimensional travel than anyone else in the world, she will build whatever needs to be built, and she will flip through universes like the pages of a book until she finds the right one. He'll have to insist on going with her at least a few times, just to make sure she doesn't get killed, and Mickey will probably tag along too as backup.

Goddamn Mickey.

Jake almost wishes he hadn't heard her say that; _I don't care about doing something stupid anymore_. It carries too much weight on its shoulders. Stupid things get people hurt and killed and shred minds like wet tissue paper. Stupid things happen in Vegas.

He supposes that's why he'll have to go with her: to keep her from doing anything _too_ stupid.

"Are you going to stare at that truck until your toes fall off, or come inside and get warm?" That would be Jackie eyeing him from the doorway, just like a proper mother.

"It's not _that_ cold out."

"Cold enough," she says, and shifts her weight onto her other hip. "Come on now; don't make a pregnant woman wait any longer than she has to."

"You don't even look pregnant," is his immediate response, but that's more because he doesn't want to get smacked for saying the opposite.

She doesn't care. "I _feel_ pregnant. Get inside, Jake Simmonds, or I'll lock you out here."

"Yes, milady. Of course. Whatever you say." He slips past her and pretends not to notice the halfhearted smack she gives his shoulder in passing. "Good to have you all back."

"Oh, Jake, sweetie." Jackie shoves the door closed and turns to him. "I'm sorry."

"I met the Doctor twice, and most of the time we were either running or fighting for our lives. I get it. Just… leave a note next time, will ya?" He grins weakly and slips away so he won't have to listen to her further.

Pete and Rose are unpacking coolers in the kitchen when Jake trots through, so he goes on up the stairs without pausing to chat. There's a dark shape ambling down one of the unlit halls; it spins around upon hearing his footsteps. "Jake?" Mickey with a rucksack slung over one shoulder – a rucksack that he is now tossing through the door to his room. Goddamn Mickey.

There are walls falling to pieces in Jake's brain and he needs to do something before they disintegrate completely.

The hallway flashes by in the blink of an eye.

He wants to kill the man – really, truly, nearly does. But he hugs him instead; grabs tight and buries his face in Mickey's shoulder and almost dies on the spot when Mickey's arms fold around him. For the first time in too long, Jake doesn't make himself think. He just closes his eyes and feels Mickey's hands, half-clenched on his back, not letting go, better than all the alcohol and sex of the past week combined.

"Don't ever vanish like that again," he mutters.

Mickey nods. "Alright." He hesitates, swallows. "Do I want to know what you did while we were gone?"

"I did stupid things." Jake opens his eyes and shifts his chin to rest it on Mickey's shoulder. "A lot of stupid things. I don't want to think about them."

There's another nod from Mickey. "We won't talk about them then."

"Thanks." He doesn't know what to say beyond that, so he ducks his face back down into Mickey's shoulder again. A hand brushes over his scalp, and Jake feels like crying. Three and a half years and over thousand dead Cybermen and he's so sick of pretending to be alright that it's almost physically painful. How is he supposed to heal when the scab is getting ripped off every damn day, and when he breaks down into idiocy if it isn't?

God, he's no better than the Doctor. Always needing someone just to hold his hands and stop them from getting too bloody. Without Rose, the Doctor would fall apart. Without Mickey, Jake would have drank and fucked and killed until a well-placed shot brought it all to a screeching halt.

It's a goddamned nightmare, it is.


End file.
